Skinny Freda wants to sit on the side of the bed, but she won’t do that because somewhere inside of her she knows Bernice would not want that. She thinks better of it, and Bernice feels her hovering near the bed.
“Ah Bernice, come back. Come back to me. Come back just to show us how we couldn’t wreck you.” She does not notice the flinch in Bernice’s right hand, and Freda puts her head on her arms and sleeps, sitting up, for the fourth day in a row.
LOLA
Lola sits and stares at the mess that is/was Bernice and wonders what the hell to do.
“Christ, I am too old for this,” she says. But, she doesn’t believe that.
Rather than wonder about what melted down in that kid, she thinks about how to get her out of bed. That was one big buffalo of a gal. Come to think of it, she is more a calf now than a cow. She washes her face, cleans Bernice like a bad housekeeper would – surfaces only. Lola also continues to bring Bernice comfort food, enough for two weeks. What she cannot observe is what happens in her absence. While she was gone, Bernice had, well she couldn’t be sure she had eaten it, but she had disappeared it. None of it was cooked or heated and The Kid seems not to have eaten anything in days.
And does she ever shit? Lola has been listening for the toilet, watching to see if Bernice changes her position in bed, leaves a drop of ice cream on a sheet, creaks a floorboard overhead. Nothing. Like she’s some sort of. Ghost.
As her employee/tenant stares blankly at the ceiling, Lola wonders what the fuck she did to deserve this.
Their days have taken on an amorphous feeling. Light becomes sleep time, dark is when Bernice’s almost imperceptible shaking starts. Sleep is preferable. Lola considers stopping visiting, but instead comes and sits with Bernice when the other women seem to need a break. She does, however, leave the food just outside the door. If she is faking it, she should at least have to walk for it, she reasons.
She looks at the thinner, much thinner face of The Kid and pronounces, “You gotta get outta here, kiddo.” Upon reflection, she adds, “Although you have more colour than the rest of us.”
FREDA
Freda opens her purse and takes out the crumpled lists she has been snatching whenever she sees them. Several are Bernice’s. There is also one from each of the other occupants of the bakery. All sit on top of the journal that Bernice has been writing ingredients in for years. She thumbs through it, stops at the first entry and wonders how the hell she is going to find bison marrow in Vancouver. And. Puts her foot on the gas. And. Goes hunting.
VAL
Valene is trying to be humble. For her, it is much like speaking a foreign language. You don’t get to be the gorgeous big woman in the room (she checks herself, forming her tongue around the new word: “Biggest”) without a heaping helping of confidence or madeconfidence. She figures she has been faking it since she was making it for so long … maybe she can do that with humility, too.
“I ain’t gonna get no lessons in that around here.” She points with her lips in the direction of Lola’s, carrying on an imaginary conversation with herself.
Lola and Freda have been filling the quiet in the bakery with nonsensical and non-stop chatter about themselves, and it was getting under Val’s skin. Their words tumbled over each other like puppies some days, each waiting to tell the other of their adventures, favourite something or other, or something else that Val did not understand. There. Was also something else in the room. Val knew it and could feel it, but she didn’t know if those two could yet.
“Not like sense is suddenly gonna stop in for dinner with ‘em.” She smiles a little smile. And then remembers. Humility. Chuffs at herself. Rolls her eyes. The two little seniors on the grass with her give her a wide berth as she walks by.
In any event, she is glad that Freda has gone to the city, gives them all a bit of a change.
She heaves herself up onto the top of a picnic table, can’t feel her skirt and hopes that it has stayed down. That’s all she needs – to be the crazy lady who talks to herself and flashes people near the spirit tree.
Humble, humble, humble. Maybe if she just thinks the word over and over, then she will get there.
Cigarette, cigarette, cigarette.
She has a pack with her and knew she would smoke, but has not had any since she was a teenager. Nope, bannock and butter were her drugs of choice. So, it does not sit well with her that she has such a craving right now.
She and her sister used to sneak smokes from Kohkom and sneak out to go puff by the water. The craving that has taken her now was familiar then. Two? Three times a day, she and Maggie would sneak past the old lady and sit by the water, talking about boys and life outside of Loon.
She has a longing for Maggie’s quiet company so fierce that her eyes prick with tears. They were spirit sisters, one bigger than the other, but reflective surfaces of the beauty that ran in their family. When Maggie was in her teens, she had the most gorgeous hair – black as night, thick and long. Val envied that hair.
Humble, humble, humble.
She also had cheekbones. Fantastic, arching and sharp bones that were at once bird-like and reminiscent of some other time. Some other people. No slouch herself, Val remembers, her own big, beautiful Cree nose and finer and curlier hair. Oh, but men loved to look at the Meetoos sisters. Valene was the talker but Maggie had a rich silence about her that people wanted to reside in. She had, Valene realizes for the first time, a real peace with solitude unlike anything she would ever know. Her sister first lived in silence. Then. In noise.
Her breast hurts. She does not have to remind herself to be humble. She has come to offer prayers to the tree. Not for the tree, like many many other of her and many peoples have done. To the tree. She wants to ask the pitiful thing (really, she isn’t sure if it is still alive) to help her family. What’s left of her family. But. The one thing she really feels, sitting here, smoking and crying (and, to be frank, farting a bit), is thankfulness to Maggie. For Maggie. About Maggie. She can’t do the emotional math yet, but she knows she has two daughters because Maggie gave them to her. She is overcome with humility and quiet certitude. She has to raise her girls right. Birdie and Freda. Her girls.
She takes her tobacco offering to the tree and asks for help. Without shame. Without fear.
“I am pitiful,” she prays and cries.
“Please help me,” she cries and prays.
One thing. She can smell moosehide and Tabu perfume. Maggie.
Bernice looks at Lola without opening her eyes and sees Lola’s mouth moving, but can no longer hear her. Bernice has heard her in the shop below at times, but doesn’t know what anyone is saying to the customers and friends who visit. She only knows it is low tone this and murmured voice that. She can no longer make out words, she supposes. She can hear, though.
Hey-ya-hey ay yay yah hah.
Hey-ya-hey-ay-yay-yah-hah.
Hey ay yay hey yah
Hey ay yay hah.
Lola shakes her head, turns on the TV and leaves.
Bernice feels the familiar vibration of the opening strain of the Frugal Gourmet theme song. In her waking hours she knows that this is a vision within a vision, and that it has some meaning for her. She is not certain she could ever bring herself to mention the cooking show to an Elder in order to get guidance.
“Keskawayatis.”*
* “She is behaving foolishly.”
acimowin
“What’s a young owl like you doing out here all on your own?”
the third leering truck driver
Who
happens to be a trickster asks.
“My mom got sick in Victoria, she sent me money to come and see her,
but I wanted to get her something nice so I decided to catch some rides along the way,”
she says in an
easy caw.
“I wouldn’t have worried, but she came out here to bring my sister home,
and she lives on the …”
tearing up
/> for effect
and to rule
out further conversation,
she seems to muster her strength,
“streets.”
The wolf
nods sullenly and clucks sympathetically,
which she thinks is nice
until
she notices
he has his thing in his hand.
12
LOVE THE ONE THAT BRUNG YOU
Mîcimâpôhkêw: s/he makes stew, s/he makes broth
pawatamowin
She raised her eyes in the lodge and tried to see who was there.
There was no one she recognized – everyone seemed quite old.
She heard a murmur from beside her and reached for the pipe.
With the greatest of effort, she raised her head and saw that the Frugal Gourmet was offering her the pipe.
She walked from the sweatlodge, across the meadow, to her home. The steam rose into the air off of her wet clothes and hung above her in a dense and sluggish fog as she lifted unwieldy left leg and then unwieldy right. The Pimatisewin is right beside her house.
There was a piece of paper taped to the tree. In her dreamwalk, she was graceful and light. As she moved closer to the tree, she noticed two things that scared the crap out of her.
The piece of paper had the words “basil and corn flour” written on it.
Also, it was in her handwriting.
SKINNY FREDA HAS BEEN GONE, maybe two days, Bernice doesn’t really know how long. After a while she had heard her and Lola talking downstairs. She considers getting up to crouch next to the heating grate to eavesdrop, but is conserving her strength. And. There was nothing interesting enough in their tone to get her out of bed. Physically, she doesn’t know if she can get up. She is aware, somewhere in her body, that things are shutting down. But from the same place, Bernice knows this is okay. She has not resigned herself to anything but occupying the space she is in, taking one raspy breath whenever she can, and trying to come back to her skinself. When she does this, she has peace with whatever happens. A knowledge is born in her: that she has been to Then. And. She might not make it back. To Now.
Little pieces of Now trickle in to her. One time Bernice heard Lola and Freda talking about Chuck Woolery from the Love Connection and the next day, well she thought it was the next day, the bakery didn’t open. She thinks that maybe they went visiting or something but wasn’t sure. She had felt a little peevish that they had gone without saying anything to her, but also that she had better keep her mouth shut.
Skinny Freda may be a lot of things, Bernice thinks, but she is no fool and she does not suffer fools. When she does wake up, if she wakes up, Bernice thinks, she’d better have a pretty damn good story to tell her. One thing Freda likes more than cigarettes and honky-tonk music is a good story. She doesn’t quite know what she will tell Freda if she unsinks. She can feel her body now, it’s loose and stiff at the same time. Her head, though, that will be the hard part. Part of her was lost for so long that it is hard to enunciate what, exactly, she has found. That she left for the first time the night of the pageant. That she steeled herself at the Christly school, and found in that steel a chance of escape. That care, the group home, lent her the knowledge that she could be strong in silence. That the Ingelsons taught her that home was not a mélange of stuff, kindness and chance. That Edmonton, her real school, taught her to change, because she had to. That returning to Loon taught her what family was not. Too much, too few words to describe it and none of them adequate to explain it. Nope, Freda would not like this story, she supposes.
Bernice suspects that Skinny Freda is up to something. She’s started buying smokes (not rolling her own) and has worn lipstick for two days. Bernice wonders if someone is coming. Maybe Freda told someone, she thought. Maybe she called Momma. Bernice would like to but finds herself unable to shake her head. She knows what no one is telling her. Momma is gone. She had pretended she believed it before, to punish herself. Now, she can feel Maggie’s absence, like the smell of smoke once cedar has burned. She is gone, Bernice tells herself, but even in her sleepingwake state, she can feel her mom. Not around her or near, but in another way that she can’t quite figure out.
One thing she is certain of, and that is that Skinny Freda – the same Skinny Freda who swore off white men because they “smelled funny” – and Lola are planning something. They keep laughing and talking and Bernice wonders, a bit grumpily truth be told, what they are doing when they are not spending their time taking care of her. She would like to chew her nails and is too weak to do so; she tries to look at them and sees through some haze (is that new? Now? Then?) that there is silver paint and sparkles on them. That Freda, she thought that if your toes and fingers looked good, you would have to feel good because they’re closest to the world. Bernice almost smiles.
That crazy Skinny Freda.
acimowin
When she looks back, that old young owl,
She sees that
her home, her tree, had become
ravaged with wolf urine
and twisted with heat.
Curled and gnarled, she is unable to sleep there.
She begins to travel at nights
because she cannot sleep in her home.
She doesn’t know what
She’s lookin’ for
But she keeps goin’ and goin’.
13
HOME COMING/COMING HOME
Kiwehtahiwew: s/he takes people home with him/her
pawatamowin
She stood beside the sweat and bent at the waist. The entryway, much like the scenery in Hollywood movie sets, was made to appear small from a distance. As she drew nearer to it she saw that the entrance was not becoming proportionally wider. The door stayed the same size, even though the lodge itself grew larger as she approached.
As she drew closer to the hole, she instinctively knew (as she knows when she sees a dress too small for her on a perfectly sized mannequin) that she would not fit in the entry.
She didn’t want to but knows that she must attempt to enter. She squeezed herself in to the depth of her armpits, the ring of the doorway cutting into her like a too-tight casing on a sausage.
Womanly hands grab her, smooth her belly with lambda olive oil and she is pulled into the lodge like a reverse birth.
SHE IS DYING, THEY THINK. None of the three says anything about it, there is no reluctant or covert admission. Last night Val had lain in the same bed as her niece and whispered to her all night. Then she sang to the light she saw passing from her un/natural daughter. She had warbled lullabies, sweet walking songs, and finally “Blood is Thicker than Water” by Andy Gibb. Through it all, Bernice lay motionless (no one says “lifeless” but everyone thinks it) beside her, wrapped in blankets. This morning, when Freda came up to check on them, words passed between Val and herself in one look. She had walked down the stairs, quietly in her baker’s shoes, picked up the phone and started dialing. That should have been a harder decision, but Freda just called everyone in the family and left it to them to make their own minds up about coming.
When she was done, she walked to Lola and they hugged, little fierce trees, withstanding the wind.
Val sits beside her niece, on the floor, staring at her for most of the morning. Love falls like thistle seeds and lands gently on top of, around, near, beside Bernice. If she is aware of Val, her love, the seedlings or her dire circumstance, she gives no indication.
Late last night, when Val had told her, “It’s okay, Birdie, you do what you have to do; you go where you have to go,” Bernice did just that.
And. What she had to do was find the space where her memory could live peaceably with her body. She could not take her body with her, so she willed herself to leave.
She found herself freed, in a way she had never been when she did the change on the streets of Edmonton. Light, in a way she had never felt when she left her body in the room under the stairs. She finds herself, this morning, u
nconfined by the agitation and nervousness that she always has. She had no coyote’s wariness. Found that she does not possess the cunning of a wolf. In truth, she feels rather like a bird. Her body below her shines with some invisible and barely perceptible light. Her auntie kneels beside her, praying like a nun. Bernice sees versions of younger Val, wilder Val, crazier Val. And feels such love for them all.
Taking care to hold her feelings with her, she inhales sharply and flies. She doesn’t know if it is through the window, through place or through time. But she is able.
She flies home. To the place where she learned to love and the place where she learned fear. Home. Where her youth mixed with her experience in a strange alchemy, leaving her self split like oil and vinegar.
Lola cannot stop moving. If she does, she is afraid she will run upstairs again to see The Kid. And she can’t do that. That big girl, formerly big girl, fermenting like an ale in her attic and no one is going to do a thing about it. God help her if she gets into trouble with them two around.
She looks at a clearly distressed Freda and is flooded with emotion. Some she understands. Some she does not. That little brown woman looks like she is carrying the weight of the world on her shoulders. And the aunt? Good lord, the aunt is all “She will do what she has to” this and “Let’s just wait awhile” that. Lola wants to throttle her today.
The Kid herself looks … well, it is hard to put it into words. Certainly there is some sort of … “Melting.” Lola says her thought out loud.
“What?” Freda looks up sharply.
“Nothing, hon, you go about yer business,” Lola says gently.
Yes, The Kid looks like she is melting. Dimming. Half gone. But. There is something else, too. Goddamn her for thinking it, but The Kid looks gorgeous. Pale, sickly, too skinny and certainly anything but robust. But. She also looks lovely. Like her body fits her spirit, Lola thinks and then chases that thought away.
Birdie Page 18